Welcome to Windows 7 Forums. Our forum is dedicated to helping you find support and solutions for any problems regarding your Windows 7 PC be it Dell, HP, Acer, Asus or a custom build. We also provide an extensive Windows 7 tutorial section that covers a wide range of tips and tricks.

I've been attempting to do a clean install (following the tutorial here) on an HP Probook 5310m, using a USB installation disk created from a genuine ISO (from msft.digitalrivercontent.net) with the official Windows 7 USB / DVD tool.

The initial phase of the installation ran without any errors but after the first reboot the installation went back to the start (i.e. the "select language" etc. screen) and did not continue automatically. As I was unable to re-start the installation, I decided to take a rest for the night and so shut down the computer, cancelling the installation completely. Prior to the installation I had prepared the HDD via the method shown here, ensuring there was only one partition before I started the installation.

Now, upon power up, I am greeted with the infamous BCD boot error 0xc000000f, even with the same USB disk used previously inserted and the BIOS set to boot from USB hard drive. I cannot boot from the USB disk regardless of its contents (I tried Partition Wizard and a "Repair Disk" I found online). As a result I can't access StartUp Repair, Advanced Boot or bootrec.exe.However, if I physically remove the HDD from the SATA connector I am able to boot to the USB disk. Installation operates as normal but obviously there is no disk to install to.

My question is: how should I proceed from here? To my mind, there are 3 options :

Buy a new HDD

Buy a SATA-USB cable and attempt to format existing HDD on my other laptop

Insert the HDD with the laptop running after installation has launched (not a good option!)

Actually, now that I think about it, inserting the HDD after booting probably wouldn't work as all the hardware has been scanned and initialized by then. If anyone has any other ideas they would be much appreciated!

Set the hard drive first to boot in BIOS setup then trigger the stick to boot using the one-time BIOS BOot Menu key at boot. This should prevent the stick from starting the install over again, but if not unplug it at the first reboot.

Since I first posted I went and picked up a new hard drive, inserted it and followed the steps in the clean install tutorial. Installation launched from USB and I proceeded to format the new HDD to ntfs and make it active. Alas, I still got the "Setup was unable to create a new system partition" and was unable to proceed so I decided to restart. Now, even though the installation hadn't even started previously I can't get back to the start of the installation. Instead I get "Bootmgr is missing" with & without my installation USB inserted. I am manually selecting to boot from USB upon startup, BIOS is set to hard drive as you recommended.

Any tips? Have I just shot myself in the foot again by restarting? There seemed no other way to proceed....

I don't think the issue is with the USB or how I've created it - I bought the USB disk yesterday and have created all bootable disks using the official Windows tool. Again, the ISO used to create bootable disk is the official Digital River one. The only thing I could possibly think of is that I'm creating the disk on a Win7 virtual machine on my MacBook Pro. The fact that it worked initially makes me doubt that this affects anything.

With regards to UEFI devices, does it explicitly state in the Boot List if a device is UEFI? My list just contains the standard HDD, various USB options, SD card and Network boot. No mention of UEFI anywhere.

The BIOS does have a UEFI boot mode which I can enable, but which gives the following warning:
"The UEFI Boot option on this system is provided for development purposes only and is currently not fully supported or warranted by HP. Preboot Authentication and Drive Lock are currently not supported under UEFI Boot. HP strongly recommendes disabling Preboot Authentication and Drive Lock before enabling UEFI Boot on this system."

Yup, tried all that are applicable. There's no optical drive on this laptop and seeing as I'm having issues with it detecting the USB drive I don't want to invest in a USB DVD drive.

I've found a "Disk Sanitizer" option in the BIOS setup which claims to wipe all data on the HDD. Giving that a go to see if I can get back to the installation again once the drive is clear of any trace of a previous installation.

The Disk Sanitizer is still running (~11 hours to clean 50% ) so I have no access to BIOS menus right now. As I mentioned above there is an option for UEFI boot mode. Legacy BIOS is enabled by default. There are no UEFI / EFI items in the boot order menu.

The original HDD was a SATA II Seagate Momentus 7200.4 (ATA-8, SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s, NCQ) which I've since replaced with a SATA III Momentus Thin.

As I can't boot from the USB disk / access installation at this point I deemed all steps beyond no. 4 in your guide as non-applicable.

BCD Boot error 0xc000000f while booting from USB installation disk

Boot error 0xc000000f- Samsung NP350V5C-AO2UK won't boot. Please helpHi,
I have a windows 7 64bit Samsung NP350V5C-AO2UK laptop (specs here is you need them (NOTEBOOKS - Performance - Samsung NP350V5C-A02UK Laptop - Laptopmania - Laptop Deal and Offer) It has been working ok until now and I've had a few issues with it but I've managed to resolve them. A few days...

General Discussion

Unable to Boot from Hard Drive I/O Error and Error 0xc000000fThe story begins yesterday (around 2 pm) after my screens just went black. I sat there for a while and waited before just turning the computer off and restarting it. It booted back up just fine and so i decided to run my AVG PC tune up to check for any errors, and it came back with "You have not...

General Discussion

Boot error, status 0xc000000fGuys,
Today my OS got freezed at the loading screen and it doesn't boot anymore. After that I restarted my PC and chose the safe mode but it got stuck on the drivers selection part.
Now I got this:
"Windows failed to load because the system registry file is missing, or corrupt"

General Discussion

Gateway Installation Disc Error 0xc000000fOk, so Ive been playing Minecraft on my PC and I went to bed, so I turned off my PC. The next morning I got Windows Startup Repair or Start Windows Normally. That never happened before, so I did some research and now I have a new error. This is the error:
Windows failed to start. A recent...

Hardware & Devices

w7 installation error 0xc000000f winload.exeI'm currently running Vista and decided to try out W7 again. I made a partition for w7. It got through the installation process ( did the finalizing setup and analizing video performance things) I got to insert a username and stuff and after that it restarts then I can choose between W7 and Vista....

BSOD Help and Support

I have the 0xc000000f boot errorI have the 0xc000000f boot error. My 7 disk is in the drive, however, I cannot change my bios to boot frrom the disk first, as my wireless usb keyboard is not being recognized. However, as soon as I hit in button on the keyboard, the computer freezes. I haven't got another keyboard (and this one...